Building Your Coaching Business – Information Marketing – What to Do When You Get the Appointment

Here are some power questions that will grab your prospective client when you have your meeting.

Stop selling, and start helping. You will see your sales close ratio go up 5-10 times from where you are if you’ve been “selling” during those meetings.

Although this article is meant to show you how to follow up the Information Marketing letters we mentioned in the previous article, this approach still works for almost any sales appointment.

Just keep in mind that “you are not there to sell,” you are there “to help.” There is a clear distinction, at least as far as how the prospect perceives it.

Does that mean that you aren’t going to close, no, you will. However, you MUST be there to help him no matter where that may go. You are there to help the prospect find the answers he needs to solve the problems you are going to help him discover. You will work on HIS problems together heading for the answers. When he finds those answers, he will recognize that you were the one that guided him there. And, in most cases, there is still more work to do. He’ll want you around to help him find more and more answers, and help him implement the actions.

Since you are not here to SELL, you will not be in the TELL mode. You will be coaching him to find his most important answers to his most important problems.

Here are some questions that just might help:

Start your meeting off by asking them to explain what was the most beneficial thing they got from the article (assuming this is the follow up to that information marketing campaign). If this isn’t a follow-up to an information article campaign then just go directly into the questions that follow.

What are your biggest goals for your business this year?

What are they worth to you, if you could achieve them?

If you could achieve them sooner than expected, what would that do for you?

What has been the biggest obstacles to you pulling that off?

What might have delayed achieving those on time?

If you could solve those problems in the next week or two, what would that do for you?

What has it cost you for not achieving those?

What is it costing you every week that you don’t achieve those goals?

You want the prospect to define the value of achieving those goals in dollars and cents. What it has cost them in not achieving them. That sets a value for moving forward and a cost for not acting.

You’ll see that most will decide to move forward either at this meeting, or a meeting that follows up quickly.

If the prospect ultimately says he isn’t ready to move forward, what do you do?

Ask him when he absolutely has to have this problem resolved?

Make sure that you know what the weekly cost to him is for every week that this is delayed, because the chances are that the delay is more costly than your fee. This might be worth a discussion before leaving.

When he gives you a date, ask him if he’d like to continue receiving your articles on how to resolve his problems. He’ll be on your list, and it wouldn’t hurt to have some hints and tips about it.

When the date comes up, give him a call. There is a really big chance that he hasn’t done anything to fix the problem. In that case, show a concern that he said it was costing him $______ a week, and you have some other suggestions that might help out. Schedule another appointment to talk it over.

Remember, your fees ARE going to be less than the costs he is facing in not getting it fixed.

You are selling your value, not coaching or consulting. Be able to give a testimonial that shows how much other clients gained from your coaching.